In all MMO’s there are sets of armor that give a specific “feel” to the class. But when dealing with Star Wars you have to consider not only artistic intent, but the entire history of the Star Wars IP. Whereas other MMO’s may find that flashy is better, in SWTOR simple robes could actually be the best choice.

We have heard the community loud and clear when it comes to armor sets. What we’ve heard the players say is, “I don’t care how high level I get, I still want my core sets to look and feel like Star Wars and like my class – cooler but not crazy. Keep the crazy to optional gear.

Want to hear more about BioWare’s stance with upcoming armor sets and how they plan to cater to the desires of the player? Click Continue Reading like a boss!

We’re speculating that the 1.2 Legacy Patch will most likely release this Tues, 4/10. With all of the recent hype that BioWare has been building for the 1.2 Legacy release, everything will culminate this weekend at Pax East.

We’ll be bringing Game Update 1.2 with us to the show, so for those of you who have been unable to check it out on the Public Test Server, this will be a great opportunity to see the new customizable User Interface, Legacy, and more.

It is extremely unlikely that BioWare will initiate the Oceanic transfers (promised for late April) at the same time as 1.2 Legacy (promised early April) to avoid problems. So their windows of opportunity are diminishing.

With the added hype and expectations built this weekend from media coverage at PAX East, this Tues (4/10) is the most likely choice. Failing that, 4/17 would be their final option. Assuming of course that they intend to keep their initial projections for release.

Happy Friday everyone, I wanted to drop by and let you all know that we have the first pass of AP changes in for the Warrior calling and you will be getting to play with them in the next PTS patch. The intention of these changes is to get the Warrior AP scaling to a solid baseline foundation so that we can make sure they are scaling properly and in a balanced way to other callings. One side effect of this is that we had to pull out a lot of band aids we were previously using to scale things in a more even fashion and have had to do a lot of rebalancing to get things in order after all of that.

What does all of this mean to you? Well, because of the extent of the changes we wanted all of you to get a chance to play with it and beat on it sooner rather than later. Please be aware that these numbers are only ballpark and nothing is final, there are changes still on the way. If you get upset, we encourage you to communicate that upset in a productive way so we can evaluate it and make some changes. If you find OP builds, let us know so we can look at them, and if you find underpowered builds let us know about those as well. You will notice that the damage of just about every ability has changed to some degree, some up and some down but in the end it should result in a more balanced playing field across the DPS souls in the Warrior. The two biggest areas you will notice changes are in Elemental damage and scaling, and Dual Wield versus Two Handers. I am also providing a list of patch notes so that you know what to expect.

Stalwart Citadel: Now adds 30-90% of your Wisdom to Block.
Devout Deflection: Now adds 25-75% of your Wisdom to Parry and 25-75% of your Intelligence to Dodge.
Sovereignty: Now deals Life damage and stuns the enemy for 2 seconds.
Supremacy: Now reduces Physical damage taken by 9-18%.
Thorvin’s Law: Now causes Mien of Leadership to reduce non-Physical damage taken by 2-4% plus an additional 1.2% per point spent in Justicar above 26. No longer has an additional Spell damage reduction.

As we mentioned in our December Q&A we have a number of changes incoming with our 1.7 patch focused at improving the overall experience for our high level players! Listed below are the highlights for what’s incoming to PTS, as each new change hits the test server we will be posting a more detailed thread on the topic for people to give feedback on!

As always this is just a portion of what we are currently working on for 1.7, so expect to see updates to features, patch notes, and forum posts as we get closer to releasing the patch!

Fellow PvPers, thank you for taking on the challenge of player vs player combat in The Old Republic!

In the first week after launch there were over a million Warzone matches played, with nearly half of all players participating in Warzones. Bad news for Republic players, though – the Empire currently leads overall, having won 53% of all Alderaan Civil War and Voidstar matches (across all servers). Huttball has been played the most, accounting for 39% of all matches – and yes, we’ll be adding a new same faction vs. same faction enabled Warzone in the future.

We are all really excited at the tremendous volume of participation we’ve seen in PvP thus far. Your interest and demand dictates what we’ll be delivering in the near future. I wanted to give you some insight into where we are with PvP development and where we are going.

First and foremost here is what we are addressing as a top priority:

Keep reading to find out what Gabe has to say regarding the future of level 50 pvp, new warzones and the completion of Ilum.

Fellow PvPers, thank you for taking on the challenge of player vs player combat in The Old Republic!

In the first week after launch there were over a million Warzone matches played, with nearly half of all players participating in Warzones. Bad news for Republic players, though – the Empire currently leads overall, having won 53% of all Alderaan Civil War and Voidstar matches (across all servers). Huttball has been played the most, accounting for 39% of all matches – and yes, we’ll be adding a new same faction vs. same faction enabled Warzone in the future.

We are all really excited at the tremendous volume of participation we’ve seen in PvP thus far. Your interest and demand dictates what we’ll be delivering in the near future. I wanted to give you some insight into where we are with PvP development and where we are going.

First and foremost here is what we are addressing as a top priority:

Keep reading to find out what Gabe has to say regarding the future of level 50 pvp, new warzones and the completion of Ilum.

Fellow PvPers, thank you for taking on the challenge of player vs player combat in The Old Republic!

In the first week after launch there were over a million Warzone matches played, with nearly half of all players participating in Warzones. Bad news for Republic players, though – the Empire currently leads overall, having won 53% of all Alderaan Civil War and Voidstar matches (across all servers). Huttball has been played the most, accounting for 39% of all matches – and yes, we’ll be adding a new same faction vs. same faction enabled Warzone in the future.

We are all really excited at the tremendous volume of participation we’ve seen in PvP thus far. Your interest and demand dictates what we’ll be delivering in the near future. I wanted to give you some insight into where we are with PvP development and where we are going.

First and foremost here is what we are addressing as a top priority:

Keep reading to find out what Gabe has to say regarding the future of level 50 pvp, new warzones and the completion of Ilum.

In my last two posts, I talked about how we will be adding new game systems and content in future patches. I also mentioned that we will be continuing to put effort toward bug fixing, balance changes and exploit proofing. But I didn’t give too much information on what we’re doing in that regard. So here are some more details on the topic.

Almost every week we will be releasing a new patch. These weekly patches are almost entirely focused on bug fixes, minor balance changes and fixing any exploits in the game. These issues are the highest priority items at the studio. They are reviewed by senior leadership on a daily basis. Bug fixes usually take longer than a week to get into the game because we need to fix the issue and then test the fix. Some bugs take longer than that because of the complexity of the issue.

There are issues that we will fix immediately. These are rare and not every issue can be fixed in this manner. We usually reserve these “emergency fixes” for bugs that are stopping players from playing the game or to exploits that could unbalance the entire game if not corrected.

Any game as big and as complex as The Old Republic will have bugs. We’re working as hard as we can to find, fix, test and patch the game to eliminate as many of them as possible.

In my last two posts, I talked about how we will be adding new game systems and content in future patches. I also mentioned that we will be continuing to put effort toward bug fixing, balance changes and exploit proofing. But I didn’t give too much information on what we’re doing in that regard. So here are some more details on the topic.

Almost every week we will be releasing a new patch. These weekly patches are almost entirely focused on bug fixes, minor balance changes and fixing any exploits in the game. These issues are the highest priority items at the studio. They are reviewed by senior leadership on a daily basis. Bug fixes usually take longer than a week to get into the game because we need to fix the issue and then test the fix. Some bugs take longer than that because of the complexity of the issue.

There are issues that we will fix immediately. These are rare and not every issue can be fixed in this manner. We usually reserve these “emergency fixes” for bugs that are stopping players from playing the game or to exploits that could unbalance the entire game if not corrected.

Any game as big and as complex as The Old Republic will have bugs. We’re working as hard as we can to find, fix, test and patch the game to eliminate as many of them as possible.